Everything Google Does Not Want You To Know

Tag Archives: OpenStreetMap

Earlier this month, I published a post about Apple and other companies ditching Google Maps for a free open source mapping project called OpenStreetMap – to catch up on that post, please click here.

Today, Wikipedia announced that it too will be ditching Google Maps and replacing it with OpenStreetMap. This is great news for the crowdsourced mapping project which is getting better by the day and gaining more support from major companies.

In updates it released today, Wikipedia says that it is releasing an all new application for the iPhone and it’s removing Google Maps to replace it with OpenStreetMap on the Android – which to me is a perfect match. Wikipedia is a high quality free crowdsourced site and OpenStreetMap functions in the same way but for maps. It’s a match that is meant to be and the Wikimedia Foundation acknowledged this in a statement:

“Previous versions of our application used Google Maps for the nearby view. This has now been replaced with OpenStreetMaps – an open and free source of Map Data that has been referred to as ‘Wikipedia for Maps.’ This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications.”

Their motivation for moving away from Google Maps doesn’t seem to be about price though, which was the reason other companies have ditched Google Maps. They say it’s more about reaching a greater number of people and making themselves more accessible.

It is being reported that Apple will be ditching Google in China and replacing it with Baidu as the default search engine. Baidu is the dominant search engine provider in China with a market share estimated at 78%, while Google doesn’t even come close to that number.

Apple’s new operating system will integrate various popular Chinese Internet services – this will make it more attractive for consumers. This will further weaken Google in China, which is a huge loss for the company because the Chinese market is a very attractive one. Apple is making it even more difficult for Google to get its foot in the door. Apple also plans to ditch Google as the default search engine on mobile devices in China.

Recently, it was also reported that Apple ditched Google Maps and is now using a free crowdsourcing mapping service for its mobile devices. It looks like the battle between Apple and Google is getting even more intense and Google is losing.

The most valuable company in the world has finally ditched Google Maps for good. Apple is no longer depending on Google to provide its iPhones and iPads mapping technology – instead the company is now using a free source to replace Google Maps.

The Google Maps API used to be available to companies free of charge, but after Google got all big and mighty it decided to charge companies for high-volume use. Apple wasn’t going to let Google gouge them anymore and is now using OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMap is an open source mapping project that lets users from around to world to freely edit and add to the development of the map. It’s like the Wikipedia of mapping and many people depend on it to find their way around the globe. You might also recall that OpenStreetMap was at the center of a major controversy surrounding Google recently. It was discovered that Google employees were vandalizing OpenStreetMap by changing information so that it gave people wrong directions. After the founders of OpenStreetMap saw what was happening, they wrote a blog post about it. To read more about this, click here.

Now, why would Google employees allegedly deliberately sabotage OpenStreetMap? That’s because the community supported mapping service is a huge competitor to Google and may completely take over Google soon. Big companies are already switching to this free crowdsourcing service and this will eventually result in improvements to OpenStreetMap. Wikipedia has proven to be a very useful and successful alternative to encyclopedias – OpenStreetMap will soon prove to be a useful and successful alternative to expensive Google Maps. As more companies flock away from Google, more people will become exposed to alternatives to Google Maps. As Josh Constine, a writer for TechCrunch, observed:

“This is where Google’s long-term problem emerges. OpenStreetMap, or OSM, is totally free at any volume, but if users improve its data on their own, they have to contribute those improvements back to OSM. If someone augments OSM with satellite, street view, reviews, or other mashups, everyone’s maps benefit. As more big maps users switch to it, it will get better and better, creating a snowball effect where it gets more attractive with time.”

Recently, the social networking site Foursquare also announced it was ditching Google Maps for OpenStreetMap. It is expected that more companies will soon follow this trend.

People responsible for the OpenStreetMap project – which is an open source mapping project that lets people all over the world contribute and which also competes with Google Maps – say that there have been at least 17 accounts that can be directed back to Google IP addresses which accessed the project’s website at least 100,000 times over the past year.

In that time, the Google vandals have moved or deleted map details and changed the direction of traffic flow. Google claims it knew nothing about what happened and that after an investigation fired the employees.

To read about the blog post written by the project founder, Steve Coast, click here